Starkly realistic works of literature generally are portrayals of the minority. They cannot well find great appreciation among the ma-Jority—not until that majority has experienced similar situations; until hag known for itself a consider-fable amount of the suffering embodied in the unhappy strong. The life of the average American is for him too happy a life to admit a Jgreat appreciation of tragic litera-tore.
Occasionally a novel or drama is written that depicts conditions, let say, in a coal mining district, or in the stockyards of Chicago. A mass of people will recognize the truth of the portrayal and the tragedy involved, and will applaud the literary endeavour. But the ripple is soon over. And why? Because the greater mass of the American people has nothing to do with the conditions involved. The A2-hour-day of the coal miner is as unknown to the sevenshour-a-day office worker, as the day of the latter is unknown to the coal miner.
"The Adding Machine," presented by the New York Theatre Guild several months ago, created a sensation lasting a long while.~ There [were many people in the city of New York and among her visitors from other cities who could appreciate the realism of the play befeause many of them were office workers and could understand the great danger of man's becoming, through efficiency, but a cog in the' industrial wheel. The interest in is drama lasted much longer than 4 preciated by-the many women whose Hot had been selected for the author's jeanvas.
When a condition arises in which women are not able to enter the business or industrial worlds, as they are for the most part to-day and able to support themselves when deserted by their 'a novel or drama. of domestic life in which the wife remains at home suffering (an un-[happy ending) will be popular.
The "kiss" may be an exaggeration, The happy ending need not always be felicitous. The ending is happy for the American when it partakes of postic beauty, regard-ess of its tragedy, and it is happy when it concurs with the rule of Jeases in actual life and not with the exception.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.